By Tiernan Ray

In response to the news the other day that U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected Apple’s (AAPL) request for a U.S. sales ban on 26 products made by Samsung Electronics (005930KS), Bernstein Research‘s Mark Newman today reiterated an Overweight rating on shares of Samsung, and an ₩2,100,000 price target on its ordinary shares traded in Seoul, writing that “We believe this is a major win for Samsung in the war being waged on multiple fronts with Apple.”

Regarding what Samsung has gained, Newman thinks the details of the way in which Koh rejected Apple’s injunction request set up a good precedent for Samsung going forward:

Even though most of the accused Samsung products are not on the market anymore, an Apple injunction win would have been extremely powerful for Apple in its attempt to go after newer products going forward. Regarding design patents, Judge Koh concluded that Apple failed to prove that infringement of its design patents had caused “irreparable harm.” Regarding utility patents, Judge Koh concluded that Apple failed to prove that Patent 381, Patent 915 or Patent 163 was a significant driver of sales for Samsung’s accused products (see Exhibit 3 for an explanation of the design patents and utility patents involved). We expect Apple to ask for an injunction again on appeal, but this clearly creates a strong precedent for Samsung and goes against many expectations considering the number of patents that Samsung was found guilty of infringing. What is more, the Appeal process will take many months.

As Moskowitz notes, and as Bloomberg’s Karen Gullo and Joel Rosenblatttoday report, Koh is now moving onto the matter of assessing the jury’s awarding of $1.05 billion in damages to Apple after that August 24th court victory.

As Gullo and Rosenblatt report, “The jury said Aug. 24 at the end of a trial that Samsung should pay $1.05 billion. Apple asked Koh to increase the damages by $536 million, while Samsung says they should be reduced by more than $600 million.”

“Koh, who held a hearing on the matter Dec. 6, has yet to issue a ruling.”

Newman notes that Koh “found some of Samsung’s arguments to reduce the damages ‘persuasive’,” and that Samsung made the case that the so-called D’677 patents and D’087 patents of Apple were overlapping in some respects, which might put $520 million of the total award at risk.

At the end of the day, however, “the award could be increased or decreased, in either case, in the grand scheme of things, it is an insignificant amount for Samsung.”

Apple shares today closed down $7.59, or 1.4%, at $526.31, while Samsung stock rose 0.8% to ₩1,515,000 in Seoul trading.

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